The Cannons
of the Civil War

At the opening of this conflict most of the materiel
for both armies was of the same type—smoothbore. The various guns
included weapons in the great masonry fortifications built on the long
United States coast line beginning in the 1790's—weapons such as the
Columbiad, a heavy, long-chambered American muzzle-loadler of iron,
developed from its bronze forerunner of 1810. The Columbiad (fig. 14d)
was made in 8-, 10-, and 12-inch calibers and could throw shot and shell
well over 5,000 yards. "New" Columbiads came out of the foundries at the
start of the 1860's, minus the powder chamber and with smoother lines.
Behind the parapets or in fort gunrooms were 32- and 42-pounder iron
seacoast guns (fig. 10); 24-pounder bronze howitzers lay in the bastions
to flank the long reaches of the fort walls. There were 8-inch seacoast
howitzers for heavier work. The largest caliber piece was the ponderous
13-inch seacoast mortar.

Siege and garrison cannon included 24-pounder and
8-inch bronze howitzers (fig. 14b), a 10-inch bronze mortar (fig. 14a),
12-, 18-, and 24-pounder iron guns (fig. 14c) and later the 4-1/2;-inch
cast-iron rifle. With the exception of the new 3-inch ordnance
wrought-iron rifle (fig. 14e), field artillery cannon were bronze: 6-and
12-pounder guns, the 12-pounder Napoleon gun-howitzer, 12-pounder
mountain howitzer, 12-, 24-, and 32-pounder field howitzers, and the
Coehorn mortar (fig. 39). A machine gun Invented by Dr. Richard J.
Gatling became part of the artillery equipment during the war, but was
not much used. Reminiscent of the ancient ribaudequin, a repeating
cannon of several barrels, the Gatling gun could fire about 350 shots a
minute from its 10 barrels, which were rotated and fired by turning a
crank. In Europe it became more popular than the French mitrailleuse.

The smaller smoothbores were effective with
case shot up to about 600 or 700 yards, and maximum range of
field pieces went from something less than the 1,566-yard solid-shot
trajectory of the Napoleon to about 2,600 yards (a mile and a half) for
a 6-inch howitzer. At Chancellorsville, one of Stonewall Jackson's guns
fired a shot which bounded down the center of a roadway and came to rest
a mile away. The performance verified the drill-book tables. Maximum
ranges of the larger pieces, however, ran all the way from the average
1,600 yards of an 18-pounder garrison gun to the well over 3-mile range
of a 12-inch Columbiad firing a 180-pound shell at high elevation. A
13-inch seacoast mortar would lob a 200-pound shell 4,325 yards, or
almost 2-1/2 miles. The shell from an 8-inch howitzer carried 2,280
yards, but at such extreme ranges the guns could hardly be called
accurate.

On the battlefield, Napoleon's artillery tactics were
no longer practical. The infantry, armed with its own comparatively
long-range firearm, was usually able to keep artillery beyond case-shot
range, and cannon had to stand off at such long distances that their
primitive ammunition was relatively ineffective. The result was that
when attacking infantry moved in, the defending infantry and artillery
were still fresh and unshaken, ready to pour a devastating point-blank
fire into the assaulting lines. Thus, in spite of an intensive
bombardment of almost 2 hours by 142 Confederate guns at the crisis of
Gettysburg, as the grayclad troops advanced across the field to close
range, double canister and concentrated infantry volleys cut them down
in masses.

Field artillery smoothbores, under conditions
prevailing during the war, generally gave better results than the
smaller-caliber rifle. A 3-inch rifle, for instance, had twice the range
of a Napoleon; but in the broken, heavily wooded country where so much
of the fighting took place, the superior range of the rifle could not be
used to full advantage. Neither was its relatively small and sometimes
defective projectile as damaging to personnel as case or grape from a
larger caliber smoothbore. At the first battle of Manassas (July 1861)
more than half the 49 Federal cannon were rifled; but by 1863, even
though many more rifles were in service, the majority of the pieces in
the field were still the old reliable 6- and 12-pounder smoothbores.

It was in siege operations that the rifles forced a
new era. As the smoke cleared after the historic bombardment of Fort
Sumter in 1861, military men were already speculating on the
possibilities of the newfangled weapon. A Confederate 12-pounder Blakely
had pecked away at Sumter with amazing accuracy. But the first really
effective use of the rifles in siege operations was at Fort Pulaski
(1862). Using 10 rifles and 26 smoothbores, Colonel Gillmore breached
the 712-foot-thick brick walls in little more than 24 hours. Yet his
batteries were a mile away from the target! The heavier rifles were
converted smoothbores, firing 48-, 64-, and 84-pound James projectiles
that drove into the fort wall from 19 to 26 inches at each fair shot.
The smoothbore Columbiads could penetrate only 13 inches, while from
this range the ponderous mortars could hardly hit the fort. A year
later, Gillmore used 100-, 200-, and 300-pounder Parrott rifles against
Fort Sumter. The big guns, firing from positions some 2 miles away and
far beyond the range of the fort guns, reduced Sumter to a smoking mass
of rubble.

The range and accuracy of the rifles startled the
world. A 30-pounder (4.2-inch) Parrott had an amazing carry of 8,453
yards with 80-pound hollow shot; the notorious "Swamp Angel" that fired
on Charleston in 1863 was a 200-pounder Parrott mounted in the marsh
7,000 yards from the city. But strangely enough, neither rifles nor
smoothbores could destroy earthworks. As was proven several times during
the war, the defenders of a well-built earthwork were able to repair the
trifling damage done by enemy fire almost as soon as there was a lull in
the shooting. Learning this lesson, the determined Confederate defenders
of Fort Sumter in 1863-65 refused to surrender, but under the most
difficult conditions converted their ruined masonry into an earthwork
almost impervious to further bombardment.